Diverging Expectations and Perceptions of Peacebuilding? Local Owners’ and External Actors’ Interactions in Guinea-Bissau's Security Sector Reforms

Abstract

For almost ten years, the West African country of Guinea-Bissau has been subject to security sector reform as part of international peacebuilding interventions. As in other peacebuilding and peacekeeping interventions elsewhere, ‘Global North’-borne perceptions, interpretations, images, and normative structures (‘peacebuilding mindsets’) have dominated the reform. They have been discursively reproduced in Guinea-Bissau's ‘peacebuilding economy’, encompassing spaces such as specific restaurants, hotels, recreation sites etc. Such ‘neutral’ venues or ‘uncommitted spaces’ have facilitated informal exchanges between discordant international organizations and actors, but contributed to the exclusion of local actors and voices. The article argues that the peacebuilding economy contributes both to the reproduction of ‘Global North’ patterns of perception and interpretation, and to the failure of peacebuilding initiatives. This is unsurprising considering that both locals and internationals engaged in the peacebuilding arena may benefit from job and rent opportunities in supposedly better designed follow-up projects.

Keywords:

• peacebuilding economy
• security sector reform
• development aid
• political economy
• Africa

Acknowledgements

I thank Kathleen Jennings and Morten Bøås for their helpful and inspiring comments on an earlier version of this paper as well as their outstanding support. I also thank five anonymous reviewers for their comments that helped me to improve this paper even further.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Christoph Kohl is a research fellow at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), Germany. He holds a PhD in anthropology from the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, and has previously worked at the Institute of Sociology at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Germany, at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and as a consultant in the development cooperation sector. He has extensive fieldwork experience from Guinea-Bissau. ([email protected])

Notes

1 The ECOWAS mission, deployed since May 2012, counts about 600 soldiers. They lead a secluded life without much contact with either Bissau-Guineans or internationals. The mission is not open to research: ECOWAS persons responsible in Bissau were so unwelcoming to inquiry that it was not possible to interview ECOWAS military deployed in Guinea-Bissau.

2 The terms peacekeeping and peacebuilding are used inconsistently by different actors, including norm-setters like the United Nations (Barnett et al. 2007; cf. Fetherston 2000). Generally speaking, peacebuilding is broader and more encompassing than peacekeeping; as Barnett, et al. (2007, 49) note, with respect to the security aspects of peacebuilding: ‘Peacebuilding activities directly attempt to reduce the means available, and the incentives, for actors to return to conflict. Toward that end, they include disarmament, demobilization, reintegration programs, security sector reform, and arms control for light and heavy weapons systems’.

3 There is often overlap in the terms ‘peacekeeper’ and ‘peacebuilder’; Autesserre (2014) refers only to peacebuilders and ‘international interveners’ even in places (like the Democratic Republic of the Congo) that host peacekeeping missions. This indicates that, while the missions are separate, the tasks are often intersecting, as are the conditions in which internationals live in the host communities.

4 Exact up-to-date figures are difficult to obtain; in early 2014, UNIOGBIS had a staff of 111, and in 2013 ECOWAS’ ECOMIB mission had 700 staff members.

5 Like a peacekeeping economy, a peacebuilding economy encompasses economic activities that either would not occur, or would occur at a much lower scale and pay-rate, without the international peacebuilding presence. To clarify, however, I do not include such macroeconomic peacebuilding activities as direct budget support in my analysis of the peacebuilding economy.

6 See Denskus (2014) for a ritual analysis of peacebuilding activities in Nepal and Europe.

7 On cosmopolitanism and peacebuilding, see Goetze and Bliesemann de Guevara (2014).

8 The concepts of ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ ‘provide a more open definition of social difference, one based in social relations and cultural differences and political and economic disparity’ (del Casino 2009, 26). The broad trend line that separates a wealthier North from a poorer South includes exceptions, as, for instance, countries like Australia, New Zealand, and sometimes South Africa and Brazil are included in the ‘Global North’.

9 Local employers (hoteliers, restaurant operators, etc.) often share with many of their international clients a ‘Global North’ social milieu, background, and perspectives (some of them are even Europeans), while landlords often stem from local upper and middle classes.

10 See for instance, Sassen (2004) on the local in the global, and Gupta and Ferguson (1992) on blurred categories.

11 On various definitions of SSR, see OECD (2007, 5; cf. OECD 2005, 20–21; United Nations General Assembly Security Council 2008, 5–6).

12 For related critiques of SSR and ‘local ownership’, see Bøås and Stig (2010); Gordon (2014); Krogstad (2014); Philipsen (2014); Mustafa (2015).

13 Including, amongst others, the creation of a national guard (disputed between UNIOGBIS and the EU), and the geopolitical rivalries between Angola and ECOWAS (see Kohl 2014).

14 Interview with a senior UN official in Bissau on 18 February 2013.

15 The importance of such informal, ‘weak’ ties as ‘local bridges’ has also been emphasized by organizational sociology (Granovetter 1973, 1364–1365).

16 Informal conversations with Bissau-Guineans in February–March 2013 and September 2014. In contrast to ECOWAS’ ECOMIB, the Angolans were from the beginning welcomed by vast parts of the population.

17 Informal conversations with Bissau-Guinean hoteliers and restaurant owners in Bissau in February–March 2013 and September 2014.

18 Numerous informal conversations with an UN administrative officer in Bissau in late 2006 and early 2007.

19 Conversation with a senior UN official in Bissau on 1 September 2014.

20 Interview with a military official on 5 March 2013. My informant was not sure about the exact year.